Lachlan Kirkwood – Digital Marketing Specialist

Having no development experience was always a limitation when it came to turning my ideas into real-world products.

In recent years, there’s been a suite of new no-code tools that empower passionate makers of any background to start building products.

In fact, it’s never been easier to build a digital product.

When I wanted to develop my own community-based platform for digital marketers – ClickThrough – I turned to a tool called Bubble. 

Bubble is a no-code development environment for building real applications.

Bubbles product was intuitive to use and enabled me to easily craft my vision.

If you’re someone who has no prior development experience, I’d genuinely recommend Bubble as a best-of-class solution.

After deploying my application on Bubble, a feedback pop-up was triggered.

In addition to asking me about my experience using the product, there was an optional field to help provide suggestions on ways to market Bubble.

After Bubbles tool had helped me finally bring my first product to market, I thought the least I could do is help provide some detailed suggestions.

With my experience in digital marketing, I wanted to outline an open-sourced digital strategy to help scale this incredible product.

 

Social Media

Before I dive into my strategy, I should first highlight that in my personal opinion, I’d identify Webflow – another no-code development tool – to be one of Bubbles biggest competitors.

By properly analysing WebFlows current activity, it’s possible to develop a unique strategy for Bubble based on similar experiences.

 

Organic Social

Bubble prioritises both Twitter & Facebook as their primary social channels.

After reviewing their historical posts, I found that their content would often fall under two main categories:

• Sharing content from the Bubble blog
• Any activity involving Bubbles founder, Emmanual Straschnov

Bubbles content is sporadic, not to mention inconsistent.

These posts are often just retweets/shares of existing content. Bubble doesn’t take the time to add any additional thoughts or value.

Webflow on the other hand, has developed a strong community across all their social platforms, driving deep engagement with no-code makers.

Taking from WebFlows strategy and also adding my own experience, these are some suggestions I’d have for Bubbles social accounts.

 

Social Posts

With no-code becoming a large movement across the maker landscape, Bubble has so much potential to actively engage this growing community of users.

Some suggestions for social posts include:

1. Memes/relatable content

Webflow drives strong engagement on posts that are specific to no-code makers or Webflow users.

I’d love to see Bubble create content that relates to this community. 

They could also make use of more engaging forms of content like polls or community questions.

 

2. Product Updates

As makers building products, we love to follow brands that build in the open. 

Building publically can create an authentic image for a brand as users can relate to similar challenges or milestones.

Bubble currently doesn’t share any content about product updates or future roadmaps. 

This is a great opportunity to seek early feedback from users and include them throughout the development process.

Brands like Product Hunt and Buffer have built active communities by following this strategy.

 

3. Events/Competitions

Bubble recently hosted their first real-world hackathon in August.

I absolutely love the idea of encouraging users to come together and learn first-hand how they can use the product.

I believe that this event is something that should be replicated at scale – driving more engagement for the brand.

Bubble could host a future hackathon as an online event.

This could encourage makers from across the world to not only use the platform, but also share their products within their own networks.

An event like this could create a plethora of user-generated content for the brand.

 

Influencers

Following on from user-generated content, I’d encourage Bubble to collaborate with thought leaders across the no-code landscape to act as influencers for the brand.

By identifying influential no-code makers on platforms like Product Hunt and Indie Hackers, Bubble could then use a tool like Scrunch to determine their average engagement rate across their social platforms of choice.

Throughout these collaborations, these influencers could build unique products in Bubble, then create blog posts or video tutorials explaining  the process of using the no-code tool.

If not already in place, I’d also suggest creating a referral program with these thought leaders – incentivising them to drive conversions for the platform.

 

Video Content

As it’s important for new users to understand how intuitive the product is, video content is essential for showcasing the products functionality.

Video is something that WebFlow does exceptionally well.

WebFlow consistently publishes videos showcasing; different use cases of their platform, tutorials about creating unique applications, and even new features as they launch.

When building my application, I found video tutorials to be the most helpful as they allowed me to easily interpret how to resolve a specific problem.

Unfortunately, these video tutorials were limited and were only published by a handful of third-party creators – not Bubble themselves.

I’d strongly recommend that Bubble allocates resources to creating new video content. Some of these videos could include;

• Interviews with makers who have used the platform – sharing their stories
• Tutorials on how to use the platform itself
• Tutorials for solving common problems e.g. How to resolve bTIXS errors
• Short promo videos showcasing the platform in use
• Behind the scenes videos with the Bubble team
• Live-streamed Q&A videos
• Timelapse videos of makers building projects inside the platform
  

 

Facebook Groups

As users are continually sourcing more private forms of conversation, Facebook groups are becoming ubiquitous.

Average engagement rates across organic posts have also declined, allowing Facebook groups to present an immense opportunity for brands looking to drive more authentic engagement with users.

When searching for groups related to Bubble, I was able to source one unofficial community.

In comparison, WebFlow has several groups catered to a wide diversity of makers.

Although Bubbles existing forum is a great place to engage with the community, the convenience of an official Facebook group could help scale conversations between makers.

 

LinkedIn

Bubble hasn’t historically taken advantage of LinkedIn… literally.

As most makers start off creating side projects whilst working at full-time jobs, LinkedIn presents a huge opportunity for Bubble to connect with these users where they currently reside.

As the team is likely to scale, Bubble should start leveraging its employees to create and distribute content about the platform within their own networks.

I’d also recommend for Emmanuel (Founder of Bubble) to begin sharing content about his journey to help build his personal brand.

 

Paid Social

Not only does WebFlow have a strong organic social strategy, but their paid social content is also laudable.

By using Facebook’s Ad Library, I can see that WebFlow has a myriad of engaging paid social ads – all of which are optimised for specific placements across individual platforms.

When reviewing WebFlows paid social ads, some of the key things I like include:

• Engaging video assets
• Content optimised for each ad placement e.g stories, in-feed ads
• Clear CTA
• Leveraging influencers to build social proof
• Optimised all ad fields
• Showcases the product in use

At the time of writing this post, I wasn’t able to find any active paid content within Bubbles Facebook ad library.

Using the limited resources I had, I’ve compiled some basic image ads for Bubble.

 

Search & Content Marketing

According to SimilarWeb, 62% of Bubbles traffic on desktop is attributed to direct sessions.

In comparison, their organic search traffic only equates to 27% of their total.

Although makers will often directly open their bubble portal, I would also attribute this disconnect to Bubbles lack of content.

Bubbles blog is hosted on Medium, not to mention, is difficult to find.

In order to source the brands blog, a user would need to navigate to the bottom of Bubbles website.

The content on the blog is also inconsistent.

The blog doesn’t distribute content targeted at the broader no-code movement, nor does it share the functionality of the product, or the possibilities of building with no-code tools.

WebFlow on the other hand, has built a rich repository of content across their blog.

The blog features 12 topline categories that share best practices, tutorials, and advice for makers.

The categories include:

• Case studies
• eCommerce store management
• Building an eCommerce site
• Building an agency site
• Webflow essentials
• UX design
• UI design
• Popular
• How not to
• Freelance
• SEO
• Web typography

As you can see, WebFlows content doesn’t just showcase the platform itself. It instead, aims to empower makers by educating them on how to build an end-to-end business with no-code tools.

By taking this approach they’re also able to share how other third-party tools can integrate with Webflows platform. 

This is a great strategy for building site links.

When building a content strategy for Bubble, I’d focus on creating a similar array of content that aims to educate both current and aspiring product makers.

Examples of this content could include:

• Sourcing the most asked questions in the Bubble forum, then creating specific blog posts addressing these queries
• Case studies about products built with Bubble
• Product-related news: Sharing new features, new plugins & partner integrations
• Share the stories of makers who have built sustainable businesses using no-code tools
• Advice on how to maintain productivity as a maker
• Advice on how to validate product ideas
• Insights into Bubble design hacks
• Lists of the top no-code makers to follow in the community
• Continue publishing internal news about the brand e.g. raising funding

I’m confident that these suggestions would be a sound starting point, helping increase organic search traffic and user engagement.

 

Product Suggestions

As an end-user, there were also a few product suggestions I’d recommend to enhance the overall experience.

Forum Chatbot

One of the most valuable features of Bubble was not just the product itself, but also the community forum.

The forum serves as a rich repository of solutions to user queries over time.

Without the valuable content published on the forum, I’m certain that I wouldn’t have been able to complete my product.

As the forum is hosted on a sub-domain, I did find it difficult at times to navigate between my application and the content I was using to solve a specific problem.

Bubbles forum is already able to provide accurate recommendations for related queries.

I’d love, however, if the forum was integrated directly into the development environment through a chatbot experience.

The bot could leverage the existing features of the forum, but allow a user to consume and implement content without having to switch between multiple tabs.

This would help streamline the end-user experience and increase productivity.

Component Library

At just $25/month, I’d almost consider Bubble a steal given its rich feature set.

Bubble is free to use while building a product and only requires you to pay once you deploy a live version.

Unfortunately, this can leave quite an ambiguous timeline from when a user registers an account, to when they complete a product conversion.

This pricing model doesn’t allow Bubble to convert those users who begin building a product, then later abandoned the idea.

Similarly, some makers like myself will often delay shipping a product to continue building features that we believe are ‘necessary’.

To drive more revenue, I’d suggest building a repository of pre-built components that users can purchase on a one-time basis.

As a user, this would allow you to streamline the build time of your application.

Bubble already hosts a marketplace for third-party developers who sell complete product templates – although I found these to be quite generic in their features.

I’d find value in purchasing pre-built components like social share buttons, pre-filled repeating groups for social feeds, and like/engage buttons that include both the UI element and the pre-written logic.

These micro-conversions could help drive additional revenue.

 

Forum Social Engagement

Within the Bubble forum, users are incentivised to engage with community queries by receiving profile badges.

This strategy is a great way to drive user engagement directly in the forum, but unfortunately, it doesn’t capitalise on a users existing audience on platforms like Twitter or LinkedIn.

Although users have the ability to manually share forum responses, there’s no way to easily distribute their forum activity across other platforms.

If there was an automated prompt to share forum responses as they’re submitted, users could easily re-publish these contributions with their existing audience.

This would help drive traffic back to Bubbles website.

Platforms like Product Hunt and Maker Log utilise similar features quite well.

Streamlined Payment Process

One of the biggest frustrations I had when using Bubble wasn’t creating an account, or even learning to use the product. 

My biggest pain point with the platform was handing over my money.

The process of shipping an application into development was a painful user experience.

Unfortunately, Bubble doesn’t make the process as simple as a one-click deployment.

I even turned to the Bubble forum to resolve my pain points, but was surprised to see that I wasn’t the only one with this experience.

Bubble currently doesn’t share any tutorials explaining the process of deploying an application.

Given that this is Bubbles main stream of revenue, there should be as little friction as possible throughout this process.

Overall, I’m excited to watch Bubble scale as it continues to provide a powerful platform for no-code makers.

Although I haven’t delved into every digital marketing channel throughout this article, I hope this can serve as a topline strategy for the brand to follow.